Both employees and their families suffer anxiety and lower well-being as a result.
The ‘always-on’ culture in modern organisations is killing people’s satisfaction with life.
Central to the always-on culture is monitoring email out of hours.
Merely expecting to be available for work creates considerable strain on employees and their families.
Both suffer anxiety and lower well-being as a result.
Dr William Becker, who led the research, said:
“The competing demands of work and nonwork lives present a dilemma for employees, which triggers feelings of anxiety and endangers work and personal lives.”
The study of 142 couples found that even without doing work during nonwork time, the expectation of work created stress.
Dr Becker said:
“…the insidious impact of ‘always on’ organizational culture is often unaccounted for or disguised as a benefit — increased convenience, for example, or higher autonomy and control over work-life boundaries,
Our research exposes the reality: ‘flexible work boundaries’ often turn into ‘work without boundaries,’ compromising an employee’s and their family’s health and well-being.”
Dr Becker said:
“If the nature of a job requires email availability, such expectations should be stated formally as a part of job responsibilities.”
Instead, the best solution is to have periods of time when employees are not required to respond to email.
Dr Becker concluded:
“Employees today must navigate more complex boundaries between work and family than ever before.
Employer expectations during nonwork hours appear to increase this burden, as employees feel an obligation to shift roles throughout their nonwork time.
Efforts to manage these expectations are more important than ever, given our findings that employees’ families are also affected by these expectations.”
The study was published in the journal Academy of Management Proceedings (Becker et al., 2018).
